A Red-Rose Chain

“Where did they go?” Rhys sounded anxious. He didn’t like not knowing where we were.

I didn’t have much sympathy for him. My heart was hammering against my rib cage, beating so hard and fast that I was honestly amazed it hadn’t given me away. If Tia’s ears had been as sensitive as her nose, surely she could have just followed them to me. I stayed as motionless as I could, unsure whether I should be praying for Tybalt to arrive and pull me out or praying that he would stay as far away as possible, avoiding this entire situation. We didn’t both need to get caught. Neither of us needed to get caught.

Sweet Oberon, please get me out of this, I thought.

Then Tia turned toward Walther, still sniffing the air, and took a step in his direction. “It’s freshest this way. Is there a secret passage? Those Yates bastards riddled their home with holes, and their Davies cronies weren’t any better. They could have dug straight down through the stone, just to give themselves another place to beat their dogs . . .”

Two more steps and she would be on top of Walther. Walther, who was the only chance we had of unmaking the potion that powered the elf-shot. Without him, we’d never be able to wake any of the sleepers—not Madden, not May, and not the true heirs to Silences. He was so close. He could fix it all, as long as he could have just a little bit more time. That was all he really needed: just a little bit more time. He wasn’t going to get that if Rhys caught him. He was going to get an elf-shot arrow to the shoulder and a long sleep in this same dungeon, and the victims of elf-shot were going to sleep out their sentences, no matter where they were.

I couldn’t let that happen. No matter how much I wanted to stay safe and hidden, I was a hero of the realm, and that meant I had to choose the greater good. Tybalt, I’m sorry, I thought, and raked the palm of my left hand against the rough stone of the dungeon wall, leaving a layer of skin behind.

The pain was immediate and intense, followed almost as fast by the dull ache of healing. The smell of blood filled the air around me, hot and unmistakable. Tia’s head whipped around, her nostrils flaring and her pupils dilating as she scented blood in the air. “There,” she said, and pointed, so much like a hunting hound that a bubble of desperate, angry laughter tried to raise in my throat. “She’s against that wall.”

“Excellent,” said Rhys. “Men?”

His men reached into their jerkins and withdrew cheesecloth bags, like party favors at a wedding. They flung them at the spot Tia had indicated. I ducked away, but couldn’t avoid the cloud of pale blue dust that exploded around me as the bags burst, filling the air with the taste of evergreens and smoke. I coughed. I choked. And finally, I collapsed, hitting the floor so hard that I felt the impact all the way down into my bones.

The last thing I saw before everything went black was Tia’s face, looming in my field of vision like a mountain. “And they call me a bitch,” she said, and spat on my cheek. I felt the dampness. I felt the stone floor beneath me.

And then I didn’t feel anything at all.





TWENTY




EVERYTHING HURT. IT WAS like someone had taken my nerves and dipped them in fire ants, all of which were now industriously working to chew their way through my flesh. The pain wrenched me out of sleep, pulling me back into a world full of nothing but suffering. At the same time, the pain kept my body from listening to my commands: it was too busy trying not to writhe in involuntary agonies to do anything as simple as letting me open my eyes.

There was a time when I would have thought that no one could endure that level of pain and survive. I had learned a lot since those easy, innocent days, back when I believed a bullet could be merciful enough to let me die.